


Maybe I'll See You, In Another Life

by preraphhobbit



Series: The Wolf [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: As it should be, F/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, idk if this is a true shipping fic or just Me Writing What Should Have Happened, sandor clegane survives cleganebowl, takes place after the series finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-01
Updated: 2019-06-01
Packaged: 2020-04-05 19:31:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19046911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preraphhobbit/pseuds/preraphhobbit
Summary: Her gaze is as sharp and cutting as blue steel, as ice, as the noon-day sky, and twice as brilliant. And he does crumble then. // title taken from the song 'how big how blue how beautiful' by florence + the machine





	Maybe I'll See You, In Another Life

In the Riverlands, there’s talk of a new beast who comes in the night. It- for a creature it is, indeed- slips over gate and fence, into garden and field, to glean the choicest corn from the crib, apple from the bushel basket, and sometimes even a chicken or goose from the flock. In the morning the young men find it’s footprints outlined in frost. There are rumblings of gathering hounds together to track it down and club to death- it’s pelt will fetch a high price in King’s Landing, surely. Yet better not to waste energies on such things. Not when spring has only just begun and there is work to be done. The beast will move on, wise women say, while the young boys gnash their teeth and sulk.

The talk drifts northward, past the Twins, into the Neck. The new lord of the Twins, some bastard Frey who escaped the wrath of whatever demon had slaughtered half their house, hears of it when the smallfolk send one of their own to speak to him on the matter. “We’re afraid, m’lord,” -clutching the hem of his roughspun shirt in his hands, twisting it nervously. “Terribly afraid. The little ones cower in their bed and every noise is a great beast, coming for their throats.”

“What do you want me to do, then?” asks his lord.

“Send the dogs after it, sir- or at least arm us with something sharp, so we can see to it ourselves.”

Better not to indulge the shared delusions of smallfolk addled by years of war. He waves his hand to send the man away. “I will do no such thing. Sharpen your plowshares, and that will comfort you enough.” 

In the Neck the beast takes a horse, grazing in its pasture, swift and silent. A shirt left drying on the line. A loaf of black bread. This makes them say it is a skinchanger, a man who can shift from beast to man to beast again. There is nothing more terrible than a man who is not a man. A man who is not a man has nothing to lose. Even less than a man with no honour, who still has his life.

Past Moat Cailin, someone spots the beast on the King’s Road- a mere chance, for he’d been going north from White Harbour, slept in an empty byre, and woken to piss. “It didn’t see me,” he said, growing bloated on vanity from the throng that had gathered around him at the roadside inn. They were as hungry for morbid things as he was thirsty for beer. “I saw it pass not arms’ length from me- just there, from me to you.” Gesturing over the table. “It was half a man and half a beast, it was, or neither. It walks on two legs, like a man, but it’s got a face like- like nothin’ I’ve ever seen in this world. A fair ruin, that thing. Whatever it is, it’s got no face I could call human.”

An old standby of the inn’s brown ale snorts derisively at him, the usurper of attention. “You’re making that up.”

“Am not!” Smacks his hand on the table. “I saw it with my own eyes, just as I see you now. It’s coming this way, you know. They’ve talked on it from King’s Landing to the Neck.”

“Words are wind.”

“Not my word. I’m joining the queen’s army, me.”

“Seven hells.” A heavenward look of despair. “Another one of ‘em loveblinded fools.”

In the village around Winterfell, the queen walks among the smallfolk. She is dressed simply, in dark grey roughspun, a heavy cloak adorned with black fur- but her hands are bare, so she can clasp them around the outstretched arms of her people, who have lost homes and loved ones and more, who have sought the shelter of Winterfell’s shadow and it’s queen. She distributes blankets to those who have none. Loaves of bread to those who are hungry. Accepts a bowl of brown from the woman who stirs the pot, on the edge of the village. 

“It is delicious,” she says, smiling. 

The woman, half-wild with obsequience, bows low over her steaming pot. “Brought that pot all the way from Flea Bottom, Your Grace. You’ll forgive me for coming so far. I shall never set foot beyond the Neck again, long as I live.”

There are wounds in this land now, deep burns which fester and grow foul. Even with Bran in King’s Landing, few enough wish to remain there, and half the village outside of Winterfell is Southron refugees. They flock in droves to the north, to live under a queen who sits level with her smallfolk. King’s Landing is still too ripe with foul memory.

In the morning, she hears supplication, complaint, and worry. She soothes concerns. Makes promises. She is surrounded by advisors and lords and maids and stewards and letters and the vast undertaking of rebuilding the north. In the afternoon, she visits the village. At night, she sleeps alone.

The woman with her bowl of brown hears the beast in the wolfswod before she sees it. A morning of deep fog, the trees being mere shadows veiled in dove grey, which muffles sound until she hears the long draw of ragged breath. Lays her spoon on the edge of the pot. Then the slow drag of clumsy steps. Finally, sees the beast with her own eyes. A rumour taken flesh. She drops her spoon, frozen suddenly with stupid terror. 

“A bowl,” rasps the beast. “A bowl of that- that-” Waving a hand or paw towards her pot.

She cannot take her eyes from the ruinous features of it’s face- hardly a face.

“I said, a bowl! Deaf bitch.”

The beast guzzles the brown without need for a spoon, pouring the thick stew down it’s throat in a single swallow before wiping it’s mouth with the back of it’s arm. Oh, it cannot be a beast. For it walks and speaks as a man does. Wipes his mouth as a man does. Says, “Another,” and hands back the bowl as a man does. She fills it and again he drinks it down, before tossing the bowl at her feet.

“Many thanks,” he grunts. And limps into the village.

Those who are yet awake fall silent at the sight of him. They stand and they stare, but he is used to that. He’s led a life of that, of staring and whispers, though not of pity. He’s not a beast now that they can see him in thin daylight. Only a ruined man. He isn’t used to pity. It doesn’t fit him well. He’s always been so large, his armour had to be bespoke.

At the gates of Winterfell, which are always open, the guards squirm uncomfortably at his approach. “S-State your business,” says the larger one, the braver one, bug-eyed under his half helm.

“I’m here to see the queen,” he forces through his ravaged mouth. Half his teeth had turned to sand, the one cheek a gelatinous rag of old scar. 

“Like hell you are,” says the stupider, rat-faced one. Jerks the end of his spear towards his knees. “Get gone.”

He breathes raggedly. Rage doesn’t come cheap to him these days, but he is still himself under the wreck. Winterfell is still Winterfell though half its walls are razed and it’s towers collapsed, isn’t it? And she is still queen.

“If you cunts don’t let me see the queen after I’ve walked from King’s fucking Landing, I’ll bash your skulls together…”

“Call the guard.”

He has one of them by the neck while the other hangs off his shoulder by the time the head of the guard himself, a portly man with a frosty black beard, arrives at last. Even still it takes three big men to hold him down, though he has no sword and his left arm is strapped to his side with a dirty sling. The captain of the guard looks at him archly. Splayed like a spatchcocked chicken on the mud and gravel.

“You’re a big one.”

“I’m Sandor fucking Clegane, I’m the biggest one,” he spits.

“The Mountain was the biggest one,” says the captain of guard. “They say Cersei Lannister brought him back from the dead. And that you died in King’s Landing.”

“Aye, and I sent him to the dead again, where he fucking belonged.”

The captain sighs. It is not the surest way to start a morning.

“You can’t be Sandor Clegane. He died in King’s Landing.”

He lays his head on the ground and breathes the frigid northern air. His lungs still sting from dragonflame and dragonfire and worse, but he can breathe. 

“Aye, he died in King’s Landing. Went all the way to the seventh hell. And he crawled out again.”

They cannot decide what to do with him, so they bring him to the queen. In his muddy clothes, reeking of sweat and piss, still winded from the tedious fisticuffs with lesser men, they bind his arms in rope and push him into the great hall of Winterfell where the queen takes her audiences. She wears blue today, as she had all those years ago. In the torchlight her hair is a ripple of deep red flame. Her eyes are blue as ice.

“Your Grace. There was a disturbance at the gate this morning.”

“I have heard, Captain Ashwood. We heard the shouting.”

“He says he is Sandor Clegane, my lady. That is impossible, but we did not know what to do.”

They bring him forward and force him to his knees before her. If his presence surprises her, or if his appearance disturbs her, her face does not show it. Perhaps she has seen worse. She’s seen the Others. So perhaps she used to the dead walking.

The men of her guard bow when she rises. Her skirt is alive with the whispers of wool on silk when she walks from her throne to where he kneels- she must not step down, merely forward, for they stand on even ground now, among the torches. Grits what teeth are left to him. He wouldn’t bend the knee if they hadn’t forced him. Not even to her. He’s sworn to no one, not even her. Doesn’t even know why he’d come all this way. Stupid cunt, himself.

She kneels in front of him and lays one of those small, white hands on his ruined face. He might have crumbled against her touch. And he doesn’t crumble when she lays her other hand on his shoulder, the one with the arm that shattered and hasn’t healed properly, so the hand hangs like a rotten fruit on the end of a stump. And he doesn’t crumble when her fingers trace the crushed socket where his left eye had been, the way a queen would explore the topography of her kingdom. 

She says to her guard, “Leave us.” Which they do, after a moment’s hesitation. A queen is not questioned. When they have left the hall she cups his face in both of her hands tries to make him look at her, but no one has ever made him do what he does not wish to, even queens.

Her voice is quiet. 

“I had given you up for dead.”

“A dog always goes home,” he tells her savagely. 

“You’re no dog. You never were.”

“Maybe you’re right, little bird. Maybe a dog died in King’s Landing, and a man came out.”

“Maybe you were a man all along.”

He does look at her then. The eye left to him is half-blind, that is the truth of it, a haze with one good spot of clarity, like a pinprick of light in a moonless sky. Her gaze is as sharp and cutting as blue steel, as ice, as the noon-day sky, and twice as brilliant. And he does crumble then. One moment he is looking at her, and the next all the strength has gone out of him, all at once. He drifts numbly towards her touch. A sudden exhaustion, and she holds his massive shoulders in her arms, and his heavy head keels towards her knee. He feels the soft weight of her lean over him. Her arms encircle him. _Stupid dog you are, Clegane._ But for once- for once- he lets someone else be strong. For a moment.

She has a chamber made up for him. New clothes. Sees to it that he is given meat and mead enough to gain back what flesh he has lost, and calls for the maester to look after his wounds. They are old wounds by now- months have passed, the rubble of the Red Keep is almost clear. The maester says if they break his arm again they can set it properly- it is good as dead, but it will not be unsightly, and perhaps with time he can gain a little movement back. 

“Go on and do it then.” Laying the dead arm on the table. “I’ve had worse, haven’t I?”

Afterward, when his cursing has subsided and the plaster and silk has set, she comes to him with tea of willow bark, her solemn gaze. Someone has woven rose blossoms, tiny and new, into her hair. The scent reaches him every time she turns her head.

“You bore that bravely. Most men would have refused.”

“They’re cunts.”

The corner of her mouth twitches. “I have come to talk seriously with you. You are the last Clegane. Their lands and holdfast are yours.”

“The Others take the fucking Clegane holdfast.” The words taste bitter on his tongue. “I’m here. I came here because I bloody well wanted to.”

“The land is yours by rights. You are a lord now, Sandor.”

“Do I look like a fucking lord to you, little bird?” 

“Many things look different to how we imagine them.”

“I won’t go back there,” he rasps. “If you want to send me away, then fucking do it, but I’ll go where I please, and it won’t be there.”

“I don’t want to send you away. If you wanted it, I would name to my queensguard.”

He responds with one of his raw, awful laughs. “I’m no knight.”

“I know that well enough.”

Their eyes lock over the table, strung together and knotted knotted tight. 

“A member of the queensguard cannot hold lands or titles. They are bound only to their queen.”

“I’ve been a Gold Cloak before, and I won’t do it again.”

Beneath her pale cheek, her jaw clenches tight and then releases. “You were the Hound for Joffrey Lannister.”

“I’ll always be the Hound,” he says viciously.

“No man will ever call you a dog again, not while I am queen. You might be called the wolf, if you chose to be, but never anyone’s dog.”

The Wolf. A funny thought, that. A man goes through fire and becomes a dog, a dog falls into the sublime abyss of dragonfire and comes out a man and a wolf and something else too, something that grew soft and fine when it was with her, underneath his ugly skin. She herself was a little bird and a lone wolf and a queen. And that was beautiful. 

“And what if I say no, then, little bird?”

“Then I would let you. I did not become queen to force men to go where they would rather not. But you cannot stay a hound all your life.”

He would follow to the ends of the fucking earth, but he doesn’t say this. Instead he reaches over the table that separates them- wide as the sea, it seems- and enfolds her two small hands in the warmth of his huge, calloused palm.

“Then I’ll be Sandor Clegane, if that’s what you want. I'll stay and be an ordinary man.”

She smiles at him. Lifts her hand to touch that cheek of his, the remnants of all the hells he’s known.

“Then stay.”

**Author's Note:**

> cleganebowl............bad.


End file.
